Question and answer (QA) forums are common on the Internet. Such forums allow a question asker to post a question and one or more question answerers to respond to the question. Because the QA forum is on the Internet, it may provide information not only to the question asker, but also to many others having the same question.
Unfortunately, some question answerers offer poor advice. Others offer advertisements masquerading as advice in an effort to promote their own business interests. Occasionally, some question answerers offer malicious advice. Accordingly, while forums may include a wealth of knowledge, they may also offer worthless, self-serving or malicious answers.
Some forums are moderated by an individual, organization or corporation, and may help visitors to the forum by ranking answers or indicating best answers. In one example, the moderator provides means for a question asker to select a best answer. This may be helpful if the asker has tried the answer and found it to be useful. In another example, the moderator may track question answerers and accord some with expert status. In any case, moderated forums tend to perform many functions manually and are much more expensive than un-moderated forums.
Primarily for cost-related reasons, many QA forums are un-moderated. With no moderator, the value of many answers and answerers is uncertain, and commercial interests and unknowledgeable answerers are free to make contributions. Without initial labeling information, such as metadata labeling answers or answerers, known automated models are unable to correctly rank and manage answers. Accordingly, information of value may be lost among useless or malicious answers.